Contemporary Fascism in the United States

Published in Argenpress (Argentina ) on 2 October 2006
by Nestor Nunez [link to original]Translated from Spanish by Barabara Howe.Posted on October 2, 2006.

A Soviet-era documentary about fascism summarizes the absurd package of lies that the Nazis employed to justify their supposed superiority over other peoples on this planet, as well as their brutal crimes committed against humanity.

In Germany back then, speeches about a "pre-existing need" to fight "wars of ethnic cleansing" and to "purify the world" were applauded. During this nearly universal purge, concentration camps where millions of Russians, Slavs, Jews and other Europeans lost their lives were regarded as a "blessing."

Six decades after these crimes were committed, it seemed as though in the history of our species, nothing like them would ever be seen again. Nevertheless, the George W. Bush government and lawmakers in the North American Congress have just turned a similar page, by establishing "legalized" torture against their supposed opponents.

This new law for the courts and authorities of the United States renders those "inconvenient" Geneva Conventions, which prohibit abuse and offenses against the detained, obsolete.

The Oval Office insisted on this legislative battle. The President needed to get his "law" on the books before the upcoming mid-term elections, when his Republican party risks losing its majority in Congress.

The neoconservatives achieved their purpose. W. Bush's controversial and partisan "war against terrorism" can now depend on having a special tool to repeat the atrocities of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, but this time under the appearance of normality and official recognition.

These are the facts which emerge into view from this serious and shameful step adopted by the unquestioned power of the Union [the U.S.] As even former Secretary of State Colin Powell has observed, the image of the United States has been severely damaged by official admissions of torture. But the story doesn’t stop there.

It is now more evident than ever that claims about the savageries committed against detainees at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo as being isolated acts of individuals, was a false "history." As has been said many times before, there was an underlying politics of violence that today has been legally sanctioned.

And at this point it is reasonable to ask oneself if the approval of the use of aggressive interrogation methods against prisoners, Washington has reached a moral crossroads when is says that it will not send the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles to face justice in Venezuela because, according to a local judge, he could be tortured by the government of Caracas.

The government of the United States has taken an embarrassing step that the international community should not ignore and which should serve as an added incentive to the American people themselves to reject the current administration.

Now we will see what happens at the U.N. Human Rights Council which in its previous life as the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, was the scene of resistance to the powerful, when it sought to investigate and denounce the abuses against "enemy combatants" detained at the illegal American naval base in Guantanamo.

In fact, various U.N. officials have described the legislation proposed by the White House as immoral and as a violation of civil rights. Now that it has been written into the Empire's laws, the least that can be hoped for is the condemnation of this century's Nazis.